16 Months Old

Guess who is walking, talking, learning to climb, and trying to run?? Little Miss Isabella Jane is!



Bella just turned 16 months old, and she is truly a toddler now, but she is still a little sweetheart. Bella started walking at 14 months, and I was sure glad she waited as long as she did. I was really enjoying not having to chase her all over the place, but those days are long gone now! And she is learning words so fast that I can't even keep up with them all! At her last check-up, they asked if she could say three words yet... more like 30 or 40! Bella has a language all her own, but she isn't too hard to understand if you're around her 24/7 like I am. She will try saying some pretty big words, like pineapple (pa-pa) and watermelon (wa-mey). My favorite Bella word right now is butterfly (fu-fy). As you can probably guess, language is the area she has developed the most in. I don't know if it just comes more naturally to her than gross motor skills, or if we are encouraging it more than we do other areas of development, but reading has been her favorite activity for the last couple of months. I read her books so many times that I've already been to the library twice to check out a whole new collection for her! She absolutely loves to communicate with people. She says "hi" and "bye" to strangers, and has started telling us what she wants, like saying "ee" (eat) when she's hungry. When given a choice between two things, she will say which she wants. ("Nana" always wins when asked which fruit she wants!). And she has started making the connection between groups of people or objects. She will name off all of her grandparents together when she hears one of their names ("Gammy," "Papa," "Nana..."). It's the cutest thing to hear! She has also started humming a little tune that one of her toys plays. Bella also loves to go places. Every morning when I get her dressed, she asks if we're going to go bye-bye, and wants to know if we're going to see any babies ("Bye-bye? Baaaaby?") and she points to the door to help get her point across. We cannot put on her shoes anymore unless we are actually leaving, because she gets so excited thinking that she's going to go somewhere to see some babies. And, maybe for that reason, she loves her shoes! (Okay... this is the longest run-on paragraph in history, but I am too tired to organize it into smaller paragraphs... it's after 9:00 p.m., my brain is done for the day! I figure it's better to make a grammatically bad post than to wait until I have the time to make a better one, because that time will probably never come!)



Bella also amazes me with her tolerance for new foods. She will try almost anything! She has actually eaten tuna and asparagus. We are trying to give her foods with as many different tastes and textures as we can before she becomes super-picky. She is already turning her nose up to peas and beans, but we recently ate at an Indian restaurant, and she ate everything that went into her mouth! Her favorites, though, are bread, cheese, bananas, and potatoes. Those are the words we have to spell out if we say them in front of her!



Bella has also started giving the sweetest kisses on earth! She hasn't learned to close her mouth yet, so if you kiss her, you get a tooth kiss! (Speaking of teeth, Bella now has six of them, plus four molars coming in!) She has started to wrap her little arms around our necks when we carry her, too. Just makes your heart melt!



In other news, a new fall semester has begun, and Stephen is teaching four classes again. But this time, all four of his classes are on MWF, so he has two full days a week for grading and conferences, which should be a big improvement!

We recently took our summer vacation to Asheville, North Carolina, and had a great time, it just wasn't long enough! We were somewhat apprehensive about taking our first sight-seeing type of trip since Bella became mobile, but we tried to stick to her schedule and it all turned out pretty well, despite having to lie down in the dark hotel room when her bedtime came at 7:00! Bella absolutely loved going to all the new places and having both of us all to herself for four days. She was so cute every morning when she woke up-- she would pop her head up over the pack and play and say, "HI!" to us, and she was ready to get going with the day! Stephen and I learned a LOT about traveling with a toddler on this trip, and are looking forward to trying out our new techniques in the future.



We also just got back from a short trip to Alabama for my 10 year high school reunion, and that was NOT as easy as our Asheville trip. Our parents' houses are full of breakables and it was a lot of work to keep up with Bella!

It is finally starting to feel "cool" out here (as in not 98 degrees), and we are very much looking forward to autumn. Our late summer vegetable garden is finally producing tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapenos, and eggplant, and the sweet potato plants are looking lovely. This has been our first garden in five years (I guess that's what happens when you move almost every summer!), so it was mostly just an experiment to get us back into the swing of growing vegetables. We tried interplanting in raised beds, and learned a lot about what works for us and what doesn't, and which vegetables are worth the work it takes to grow them. I am loving low-maintenance plants right now, and our moss rose, marigolds, and lantana have been the winners this year for annual color. You can just plant them and forget them, which is important for me right now because I might very well forget about watering and fertilizing them! (Bella is on my brain all day and there isn't much room for anything else!) Plus, Bella loves watching the butterflies and bees they attract.

Bella is all ready for fall and football!


I think that covers everything we've been up to lately and all of Bella's new developments. It looks like I am not going to be updating this blog very often (only a few posts so far this year... where has the time gone?!?!), but stay tuned, I'm not giving up on it yet!